The overall level of world peace world fell for the third year in a row, according to the latest version of the Global Peace Index produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
Most of this trend was driven by the increased "social and political
turmoil in the Middle East and North African Nations during the early
part of 2011," the report notes.

But what are the factors that
shape the relative peacefulness of nations? And, what is the connection
between peace—or its opposite—on their economic growth, well-being,
and prosperity?

Iceland
and New Zealand are the first and second most peaceful countries on the
planet according to the GPI, followed by Japan, Denmark, and the Czech
Republic. Canada is ranked eighth. Not surprisingly, the US—with the
world's largest military, enmeshed in a seemingly "perpetual war" on
terrorism, a large prison population, high homicide rate, and relatively
large domestic police presence—is ranked 82nd, between Gabon (81) and
Bangladesh (83). The five least peaceful nations are North Korea,
Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, and Somalia. War-ravaged Libya fell from 83 to
143. It's worth pointing out the considerable differences among the
rising BRICs nations. Two of them have high GPI scores—Russia (147)
and India (135) - and thus rank among the world's least peaceful
nations, while the other two—Brazil (74) and China (80)—rank in the
neighborhood of the United States.

I thought it would be
interesting to compare countries' rankings on the GPI to their standings
on a number of other economic, social, and demographic factors. With
the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute
colleague Charlotta Mellander, we ran the numbers and generated a
series of scattergraphs, plotting GPI against these other metrics. Our
analysis only covers approximately 75-80 countries due to data
availability. Also note that the higher the GPI score, the less peaceful
a country is. Though we found strong associations between a country's
prosperity and its GPI, we can't say for certain whether peace promotes
prosperity or prosperity promotes peace—or whether other factors that we
haven't considered play an equal or greater role. But the patterns that
come up are intriguing enough to report here.

Generally
speaking, peace follows the level of economic development. A large
number of affluent, advanced nations - Norway, Canada, Denmark, Japan
and New Zealand—are among the most peaceful in the world. The GPI is
strongly associated with the level of economic development (a
correlation of -.6—recall that the higher the GPI is, the less peaceful a
nation is, hence the negative correlation). There are also quite a few
outliers, Russia, Israel and the United States among them. Great powers,
economically dominant countries like the US today or the UK in the
past, have also always developed large militaries. So have their rivals,
like the USSR during the Cold War, or France and Germany on the
continent during the days when England reigned supreme.

Peace is also a product of the type of development, not just its level. The apex of economic development has
shifted from resource extraction and manufacturing economies, with their
large working classes, to more highly-educated and idea-driven
post-industrial knowledge economies.The GPI is closely associated
with the share of workers in professional, technical and creative fields
(-.48) and also with human capital (-.45, see also the scatter-graph
above). Russia, Israel and Pakistan are extreme outliers.

It
almost goes without saying that peaceful countries have higher levels of
happiness and well-being. When people don't have to worry about sending
their children off to war, being invaded by enemy armies, or terrorists
with suicide bombs, they naturally experience higher levels of life
satisfaction. So it's not surprising that the two are closely associated
statistically, with a correlation of -.52 (once again, remember that a
higher GPI score reflects a lower level of peace, hence the negative
correlation). The US is again something of an outlier here, situated
near Mexico and Saudi Arabia—nations with significantly higher levels
of well-being than their GPI scores might predict. Israel, Russia and
Pakistan remain the extreme outliers.

And finally for the biggest
takeaway: There is a considerable positive correlation (.42) between
the GPI and income inequality (see above). Nations with less income
inequality have higher levels of peace, while inequality is associated
with peace's opposite. Once more, Russia, Israel and Pakistan are the
outliers. Central American and South American nations do particularly
poorly on this measure—look at Honduras, El Salvador, and Ecuador, far
out on the upper right quadrant. This tendency might be even more
pronounced had we had the data for some African countries. Countries
with strong inequality are often poorer nations with resource-based
economies. Such nations are more likely to be governed by the kinds of
authoritarian regimes that are prone to strong man tactics internally
and maintain tense relations with neighboring states.

Whether
prosperity breeds pacific attitudes or vice versa is open to debate, but
it's abundantly clear that peace goes along with relative affluence,
higher living standards and greater levels of happiness, while its
absence means the reverse. It makes good sense to see peace-making and
economic development as mutually-reinforcing goals and strategies. War and violence are troubling by humane standards. They also run counter to the wealth and happiness of nations.

About the Author

Richard Florida is Co-founder and Editor at Large of CityLab.com and Senior Editor at The Atlantic. He isdirector of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto and Global Research Professor at NYU.

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